A few things to take note…

(Deep breath) The owl punch is retiring. Shocking, I know, I know. Just order it here.

Over 195 items have sold out as of 11.45am! Seriously, don’t leave it too long.
(Edited: FYI we originally thought the clear mount cases were retiring, but they will still be available to purchase even though they aren’t in the catalogue).

The 2015-2017 In Color products are retiring. Not a surprise, I know, but each year customers contact me looking to restock their In Color consumables (think -> cardstock and ink refills) but there’s nothing we can do! Don’t miss stocking up on them while they are still available. And if earlier years are anything to go by, they won’t be available for long.

Gorgeous Grunge is retiring. A staple in my collection, and one that has been hugely popular for my customers over the past couple of years. If you ever wanted it, and never got it, then you’ll definitely want to do that now. The Nailed It tool stamp retired too, but unfortunately it has already sold it! It was gone in minutes.[Edited again: Correction – Nailed It is still available but as a bundle with the framelits only! See it HERE]

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New Catalogue

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For Stampin’ Up! demonstrators around the world it’s a very exciting day because the upcoming annual catalogue is now available on our demonstrator website.

Lots of squeals and excitement already this morning.

For now, the catalogue is only available for demonstrators. But if you want to have a look, you’ll need to join us, which you can do right here. I would love to welcome you to our friendly team. A team who genuinely care and connect with each other, right here in Australia. Don’t become just another number. I offer personalised support for those who want to run a business, and respect those who just want an awesome discount. I’ve been with Stampin’ Up! for nearly 10 years, and run an ethical, supportive and authentic business. Sometimes you just have to follow your gut instinct.

OnStage

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And in further news…

Over the weekend, Stampin’ Up! hosted demonstrators from around the world at our 6-monthly convention. We were all there to celebrate Stampin’ Up! and each other, to welcome the new annual catalogue, and to learn about all the AMAZING new products coming our way. And yep, there really are AMAZING new products!

Here are some more – including some sneak peeks of the new 2017-2018 Annual Catalogue!

Sydney is an impressive city, no doubt about. I was lucky enough to get up early on the last day and set up this time lapse video (tip: check out the ships!)
[Viewing via email? Visit website to see the video]

CentreStage Leadership Night

It was a brilliant dinner – very fancy schmancy – and I’m still dreaming about the desserts. Oh my.

We were treated to training delivered by Carrie Cudney Warner and Paula Critchlow, and given the ‘heads up’ about a few upcoming changes and improvements. It’s so nice to be treated with such respect and care by a company, and we certainly left feeling valued as leaders and demonstrators. And we left with gifts!

I was able to share the evening with 7 of my team, including my upline! What a treat! You have to be a title of Silver Elite and above to qualify to attend this event, and unfortunately not all those in my team could come, but those missing were certainly in my thoughts during the evening.

And here’s some of the fabulous loot I brought home after the dinner! Woohoo – can’t wait to ink up my new stamp sets. (We got more the next day too!)

We got the new catalogue! (We haven’t been allowed to share any details about the catalogue or the event, but we can from today).

Such a pretty cover! Of course we hardly got any sleep that night, from pouring over the catalogue and studying all 232 pages of it!

[Yes, it’s bigger than last year!]

OnStage

The next morning kicked off early with a 7.30am start. I was lucky enough to share a table with some team members and a new friend I met at the event (Hi Emma!).

The day was filled with training and presentations, crosses via video to OnStage Live (which was hosted in Amsterdam this year), food and even some crafting. In fact, we made 4 full cards using new products from the upcoming catalogue.

So there you go! I hope you enjoyed my wrap of OnStage in Sydney. Of course, we saw a lot more products, which I will share a little bit here and there, but none of it will actually be available to buy until 1st of June. In the meantime, make sure you study the Retiring List and get any last minute items you want. Some items sold out within minutes, so don’t leave it too long.

What an amazing colour palette we have for ColourInkspiration Challenge #5!

Such a striking combo, it actually made me want to run to the craft room to create something.

I pulled out my inks and papers, but in the end my eyes kept returning to the fabulous mini egg cartons that were sitting on my desk. I think they were calling my name. Check them out here.

They come in a pack of 8 neutral, uncoloured egg cartons, and you can dress them up any way you like! Very clever actually.

Colouring Stampin’ Up! Mini Egg Cartons

I added a few drops of ink refill to a spritzer, along with some Isocol rubbing alcohol, and sprayed the colour on to my box. The rubbing alcohol works great, because it evaporates really quickly and doesn’t seem to ‘wet’ the carton as much as spritzing with water. You could spritz with pure ink refill, I suppose, but the colour would be very intense, so I like to add a carrier like the rubbing alcohol.

I went for a mottled build up of colour as shown below…

And inside is a lovely box of treats for my ‘sweetheart’!

Get it? Sweet {heart} <3

I played with lots of dies and embellishments and basically just had fun putting this little project together. Don’t forget to create matching “fill” for inside your box. The easiest way is to cut up coordinating cardstock with the fringe scissors.

Thanks for visiting today. Next stop is the fabulous Kelly Kent. You are going to LOVE her project.

I hope you enjoyed this 6th Colour INKspiration challenge. Each fortnight the crew inspires you with a blog hop as we unveil the new challenge colours, and you can join in on our challenge page! Come and join us.For a little bit of extra fun, each week the crew will pick a winner, and there’ll be a people’s choice winner too.

Welcome to this week’s CASEing the Catty blog hop.Every Sunday night at 7pm AEST/8pm AEDT, the CTC Crew share great ideas from the latest Stampin’ Up! Catalogues. We either directly CASE (Copy and Share Everything) a project or we use a layout or even a colour combo as inspiration for our own creations.This week, we are sharing our projects inspired by pages 46 – 49 of the 2017 Occasions Catalogue.

This week we were given pages 46-49 of the Occasions catalogue to look to for inspiration, and even though most of those belong to the Urban Underground suite I chose the fabulous Everyday Hero cards instead.

TOP ROW:

MIDDLE ROW:

BOTTOM ROW:

SPACING:

There should be an even 5mm (half centimetre) spacing around each box.

Struggling with the spacing? Cut a 5mm strip of thick cardboard and use that as a DIY block divider.

For a bit of WOW, try adding some extra embellishments or raising the fussy cut pieces with Stampin’ Dimensionals.

Supergirl was stamped on Shimmery White cardstock in Stazon ink. Colour was added by first wetting each section and adding ink dipped on the end of an Aqua Painter. The colour will pool in the wet area, so the trick is to resist every urge to touch the paper until it’s totally dry.

Otherwise it will run = huge inky mess.

Yep, it really will 😉

Oh and those fabulous Pacific Point blue stars are from the Star Blast Edgelits dies. Have another look at those dies if you overlooked them originally. Seriously! They are much more versatile than they first seem, that’s for sure.

Well, that’s it for me this week!

Thanks for visiting but I hope you’ll stick with me as we continue on the blog hop. Our next stop is Judy May. Let’s see what she has created for us this week…

The challenge this time was to use Blushing Bride, Soft Sky and Sahara Sand.

And how adorable is our inspiration board? Love it! Bronwyn Eastley, the creator of Colour INKspiration challenges, is a genius at coming up with these fantastic colour combos inspired by other images.

I think I must have babies on the brain at the moment, so that’s the theme I went with.

Some friends are having babies, others are becoming grandparents for the very first time (how exciting!), and we had a few requests to do baby cards in stamp club this month too.

The lovely soft pastel colours are ideal for a baby card – although it was a little more challenging to use the colours on a single project.

This is what I ended up with….

This is an oversized card, which is 14.5cm x 14.5cm.

It features the Little Cuties stamp set from the Occasions catalogue, and the ‘hello’ and ‘baby’ stamps from Tin of Cards stamp set.

Also dabbled with a little bit of watercolour wash on the Shimmery White cardstock. Shimmery White gives great results for this kind of colouring, because it is more resistant to all the water that goes on. The rocking part was paper pieced onto the base – stamped and fussy cut from Sahara Sand cardstock.

Really lovely, soft colours that work beautifully together. Sahara Sand is a great neutral colour.

I hope you are enjoying seeing all the other projects using this colour combo – you can continue along the hop to visit Jackie’s blog here.

Happy stamping,

I hope you enjoyed this 5th Colour INKspiration challenge. Each fortnight the crew inspires you with a blog hop as we unveil the new challenge colours, and you can join in on our challenge page! Come and join us.For a little bit of extra fun, each week the crew will pick a winner, and there’ll be a people’s choice winner too.

Welcome to this week’s CASEing the Catty blog hop.Every Sunday night at 7pm AEST/8pm AEDT, the CTC Crew share great ideas from the latest Stampin’ Up! Catalogues. We either directly CASE (Copy and Share Everything) a project in the catalogue, or we use an aspect like a layout or colour combo as inspiration for our own creations.This week, we are sharing our projects inspired by pages 12 to 15 of the 2017 Sale-a-bration Brochure.

Tasty Trucks

Tasty Trucks is such a cute little Sale-a-bration item, and is proving to be quite popular with my customers.

That adorable truck alone is worth it!

Here is the lovely card that caught my eye for this week’s CASE-ing The Catty challenge:

Tasty Trucks is on page 12 of the Sale-a-bration brochure, and is a 16 piece photopolymer stamp set.

And here is what I came up with…

I kept everything fairly close to the original, although I did switch out the embossing folder and experimented with a touch of double embossing.

Have you tried that technique before?

Double Embossing

Simply run a panel of cardstock through the Big Shot with your chosen embossing folder, then run it through again after moving the cardstock slightly.

You end up with a very interesting look. I wanted the bricks to look a little smaller on my card, and I think it worked quite well.

The stamp set comes with a variety of cute little sentiments and smaller icon-type images… including:

a cupcake,

ice cream,

hot dog,

sausages,

stack of pancakes

and – a taco!

The taco is quite a big deal in our family. We are a fan of Taco Tuesday so that little taco has appeared in my planner more than once, and will no doubt be added to my collection of planner stamps. I’ll upload a picture of it in my planner over on my Facebook page.

The Happy Birthday was actually part of a longer sentiment, but I cut it apart as I often do if I want to get a bit more versatility out of the stamp. It saves me having to mask off the part I don’t want, and I can easily use different colours for the different words.

I hope you enjoyed my project today. Continue on to Kelly’s fabulous blog to see what she has in store for you today.

And as always, please feel free to join in if you’d like to CASE (copy & share) your own project from pages 12 to 15 of the Sale-a-bration brochure.

Well hello! And welcome to the 4th Colour INKspiration challenge. Each fortnight the crew inspires you with a blog hop as we unveil the new challenge colours, and you can join in on our challenge page! Come and join us.For a little bit of extra fun, each week the crew will pick a winner, and there’ll be a people’s choice winner too.

This time we have some big, bold, strong colours. Wow – aren’t they powerful?

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